Hard-won democracy is at stake in the U.S.

What is happening to our beloved country? At least 50 percent of our political representatives seem to have resorted to outright lies, crazy conspiracy theories and even criminal attempts to manipulate election results in an attempt to bring down their rivals in the political arena.

Many of them and their followers appear to regard science as a choice rather than a belief. Rather than believe the truth, these folks also take Facebook, Twitter and other baseless feeds as real news and ignore the dwindling set of honest journalists. And many of these few, real, honest newspersons and their families are receiving vicious threats from the so-called honest citizens who don’t want to hear the truth.

Why do so many of our politicians spend most of their time trying to take away things from or eliminate services for the poorer half of the population in order to give even more to the richer half?

Why is it that so many Americans chant the mantra “My body, my choice” regarding life-saving vaccinations but seem to believe it’s OK to prevent a poor desperate woman from terminating an unwanted pregnancy that may kill her and her baby? Why is her body not “sacred” like theirs?

Why are so many on the right plunging toward electing authoritarian candidates who have openly stated they don’t believe in democracy? And in a further tilt toward authoritarianism, many in our police and other law enforcement forces are behaving more like the old East German “Stasi.”

Why are we the people allowing certain police forces to continue to use “qualified immunity” to protect themselves from conviction when they break the law? Why are they still allowed to confiscate private property and cash under the civil asset forfeiture process even when no crime has been committed?

And why is it that a large proportion of “executions” by the police are simply never reported? (As reported in the

New York Times recently.) This is a frightening shift toward a police state and it’s been happening for a while.

I strongly believe most of our police and other law-enforcement personnel are fine, upstanding citizens who are serving us, the people, very well indeed. But the trend is disturbing and very frightening

To anyone who has read history, especially that of the first half of the 20th century, it’s obvious where we’re headed.

And, the supporters of this authoritarian shift, mostly from our country’s far-right wing, are encouraging violent insurrection, as we saw on Jan. 6. These calls come synchronized with an unprecedented wave of purchases of mass-murder weaponry. It’s clear that the leaders and politicians who support this direction believe they have much to gain.

But we, the general population of the United States, have nothing to gain and everything to lose from this desperate plunge toward authoritarianism.

We succeeded, just, in removing Trump and some of his minions.

Now we must remove the rest, and soon. Our hard-won democracy and personal freedoms are at stake. We must use what’s still left of our democracy and vote the bums out while our vote still counts.

David King was born in the U.K. but has lived in the U.S. for over 45 years, becoming a U.S citizen in 1992. He retired to Santa Fe in 2005 after a long career in IT.